Something I Actually Do Understand About the Economy

I do think that I understand why people are so fearful of inflation right now.* My guess is that there are two reasons.

One is that we are pursuing highly unconventional policies. Since the 2008 crash, the U.S. has been running budget deficits are large as 10% of GDP and pursuing highly expansionary monetary policies. The Federal Reserve has lowered short term interest rate to zero and pursued repeated rounds of quantitative easing, i.e., purchase of long-term treasury bonds to bring down long-term interest rates. This is what critics call financing government by printing money. Under all normal circumstances it is, indeed, inflationary. The thought that there might be exceptions is difficult to fathom.

The other reason is that people tend to think of inflation in terms of rising prices, and ignore rising (nominal) incomes. So, when incomes stagnate, people become highly inflation-averse, fearing any rise in prices, and not taking into account that true inflation will raise their incomes as well.
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*And just for the record, although Republican sabotage may be a part of it, I can think of three reasons why other things are at work. (1) Even people of very liberal outlook are on record as fearing inflation. (2) The fear is not limited to the U.S.; Europeans have it too. (3) There were similar fears during the Great Depression which, as now, made it extremely difficulty to counter the downturn with expansionary policies.